The Court of Accounts has denied the claim of some of the parties to the accounting trial for 1-O and the foreign action of the Generalitat that the former Catalan president Carles Puigdemont declares by videoconference.
The counselor in charge of the prosecution has rejected that Puigdemont’s statement, as a defendant, be made electronically because there is no material time to organize it once the hearing is held this Friday.
The counselor warns in an order that it was not until November 13 that several co-defendants, including former counselor Lluis Puig, have requested that Puigdemont’s statement be by videoconference when they have had a year to do so.
The resolution explains that the request “has not been made with sufficient notice to be processed in the terms provided by law.”
In this sense, it is reasoned that the applicants have had almost a year to be able to make their request “and, however, they have not formulated it until there were four days left before the test taking ceremony scheduled for next Friday the 17th.” November 2023″.
Furthermore, the counselor maintains that those requesting that the statement be by videoconference “have not explained or justified the causes and reasons why Puigdemont could not appear to testify in the Court of Auditors’ Justice Chamber.”
Currently, Puigdemont does not have a European arrest warrant but the national warrant has been activated, which means that as soon as he arrives in Spain he could be arrested to be placed at the disposal of the process instructor Pablo Llarena. Once the amnesty law is approved, the arrest warrants will automatically expire, but until the law is enacted, the Junts leader could be detained.
Sources from the supervisory court explain that if Puigdemont does not appear to testify, they will assess how to proceed based on the law of civil procedure.
This case, for which the Prosecutor’s Office is demanding 3.4 million euros from thirty former officials of the Generalitat, has been one of the central axes of the negotiation for the amnesty law. Defense sources expected that once the text of the law was registered in the Congress of Deputies, the hearing would be suspended in view of the fact that once the law is approved the matter will be annulled based on the amnesty.
The new law that will now begin its parliamentary processing specifies that the accounting causes derived from the process from January 1, 2012 to date are amnestied. This implies that this matter must be amnestied and therefore the process will be settled once the law is promulgated and the court applies the law.
Among those indicted were Puigdemont himself, his predecessor Artur Mas and former vice president Oriol Junqueras, among others. The misuse of public funds to organize the 1-O when the Constitutional Court had declared it illegal and the use of public money to promote the process abroad was claimed.
This court already condemned Mas and some of his councilors for the 9-N consultation in 2014 and will now also be amnestied. However, in your case the law warns that in case of final convictions the money paid will not be returned nor will there be any compensation.
